BBC staff spent more than £300,000 sitting very comfortably on first class train seats last year, despite a ban on luxury travel.

BBC have money to waste as staff spend thousands on first class travel

The £332,694 of licence-fee-payers cash for 4,464 journeys was part of a total of £5,488,423 spent on rail fares alone in the 12 months to April, up £140,000 on 2013-14. One ticket, a standard return from London to Manchester, cost £325.

The bill has caused a public spending watchdog to ask if this was appropriate use of the licence fee. John O’Connell, director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “The BBC is a national organisation so some travel is inevitable, but the amount spent on first-class tickets, in particular, will leave licence fee payers nothing short of furious.

“The licence fee takes a big chunk out of family budgets and that money needs to be treated with more respect.

The BBC needs to revisit its policy for train bookings for both guests and staff, with first class used sparingly if at all, and if these costs don’t fall significantly staff need to be held accountable.”

First class rail travel is not permitted, except where it is the cheapest available ticket ... as such they are only a small proportion of our business travel

A spokesman for the BBC

The organisation’s controversial Media City in Salford, near Manchester, has been criticised for increasing travel and hotel bills.

The most expensive train ticket booked for a member of staff was an Anytime Return between London Euston and the Salford Metrolink station. One staffer spent £352.28 per night on a hotel in Barcelona when the Mobile World Congress conference was hosted in Spain.

A spokesman denied it was technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. The organisation has spent £44.5million on hotels for guests and staff over the past five years.

It receives more than £3.7billion each year from the licence fee, which costs each household £145. Andrew Allison, head of campaigns at The Freedom Association which is calling to Axe The TV Tax, said: “Although the BBC pleads poverty, which is why it is threatening to remove BBC3 from our television screens, once again we see that with a guaranteed multi-billion-pound income, it still has enough of our money to burn.

“It should be spending every pound of licence fee payers’ money wisely but instead, the top brass are more interested in their perks. As Charter renewal approaches, there is still plenty of fat to trim.”

A spokesman for the BBC said: “First class rail travel is not permitted, except where it is the cheapest available ticket ... as such they are only a small proportion of our business travel.

“As the world’s biggest public service broadcaster, of course our journalists, programme makers and leaders need to travel which can often be at short notice, and value for money is a priority."